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Mozilla Ditches Firefox's New-Tab Monetization Plans
hypnosec writes "Mozilla has ditched Firefox's new-tab monetization plans because they 'didn't go over well' with the community. Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla's VP of Firefox, said much of Firefox's community was worried Mozilla would 'turn Firefox into a mess of logos sold to the highest bidder' and that users wouldn't have control over this or see any actual benefit. 'That's not going to happen. That's not who we are at Mozilla.'"
laugh... but you would have gone ahead with it if you could have gotten it past the "community".
We need a new Firefox, someone "pure" again.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The new UI isn't going over well either; maybe they should ditch it, too. (I know some people like it - I wish they'd at least make it optional.)
And I'll never use it again.
FTA: "But we will experiment. In the coming weeks, we’ll be landing tests on our pre-release channels to see whether we can make things like the new tab page more useful, particularly for fresh installs of Firefox, where we don’t yet have any recommendations to make from your history."
Or how about just not recommending anything to me? That too complicated a concept, or just not enough money in it?
Funny thing about the web - I get to decide where I go and what I see and when. Any attempts to circumvent that control, whether by obnoxious advertising or regional access controls or even hijacking my new blank tabs with anything other than a new blank tab, people will push back against. And people will succeed, because you ain't the only game in town - And yes, that includes Mozilla, it includes Google, it includes Microsoft. Give us what we want, not what you wish we wanted, or we will move on and leave you to die from prolonged irrelevance.
Now, if they would just ditch that awful fucking interface they just foisted on us...
And I'll never use it again.
Now who's being intolerant?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
[citation needed]
Lets be honest, they reason they're not going ahead with this is because they are not desperate for cash, Google et al are paying Mozilla hundreds of millions literally for their search engine to be prominent (Yahoo is the top placed search engine for Android Firefox).
And if this was prominent instead, it could cost them a pretty penny.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
So, just let me get this entirely straight. A man was hounded out of his job for not having the "correct" beliefs*, and when someone objects or defends his right to an opinion, he, too, is "intolerant" (and according to the downmodded post, a "closet homophobe)? This is your definition of tolerance?
Scratch a liberal or "advocacy group" and you see the same rotten core you saw in 1933.
And the terrible crime here is that the man contributed to a *successful* change to the CA constitution, after a previous *successful* propostion to the same effect was defeated by the same pack of "tolerance" bullies?
If I wanted my fucking browser to look like Chrome, guess what? I woud've switched to Chrome a long time ago. Now I get an update today and it looks like crap.. sigh. Where's the 'don't touch my old fucking settings because i'm a hating curmudgeon' button, because I think its time for it.
Bye!
Not to mention that would be the last day I would use Firefox; not merely out of protest but because as a web developer I would know that Firefox's market share would break into the single digits within 6 months.
This amazes me how companies can become so distorted in their thinking that it would make sense for them to think that this would fly. While I like and use Firefox they must understand that my intrinsic loyalty is nearly pure habit. I have switched browsers maybe 5 times and anticipate that I will switch again. I am willing to bet that in 10 years that whatever browser I am using then doesn't even exist right now. Or in 10 years something may completely supplant the browser.
I have no major investment into a browser and it would take me minutes to switch. This is not like a car, if a better car comes out tomorrow I won't just dump my existing car and buy the better one. I suspect there is an economics/business term for when people are capable of switching products and brands in a heartbeat.
And I'll never use it again.
Now who's being intolerant?
The management of Firefox, that's who.
Boycotting Firefox is no more intolerant than boycotting Chic-fil-a because you don't like their policies.
They're "intolerant bigots" because CEO stepped down over public furor regarding him being... an intolerant bigot? No, your logic is broken.
Firefox suck and Chic-fil-a is delicious. Big difference. You're better off when you switch browsers from Firefox.
More importantly, for contributing $1000 to a political campaign in favor of an amendment that explicitly attacked a segment of the populace, on top of repeatedly (and publicly) supporting congressmen who regularly express bigoted attitudes towards homosexuals. So yeah, he was given the lead position on Mozilla and people flipped their shit because he backed politicians that spew bullshit to demonize them.
No, this is the old "you must be tolerant of my intolerance" nonsense. No one has to sit back and accept being walked over, particularly when the basis for it is entirely hollow.
Wait, what? Is this an indirect Godwin?
What does it having been successful have to do with anything?
What are you referring to?
and started using seamonkey, i dont like firefox's new user interface, the stop & refresh button is now embedded on the right hand side of the address-bar and no way to move it back (i want it back to the left). and i notice now when i close firefox that artifacts stay in memory so if i relaunch firefox again a dialog pops up telling me firefox is already running.
maybe when i get some new hardware and install a newer release of Linux i will give firefox another try, but until then i got to keep this old junk working the best i can
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
If SeaMonkey had tab groups, I'd switch in an instant.
The reload button embedded into the url bar without the ability to move it back to the sane place next to the other navigation buttons (home, back/forward, stop/reload) is the killer for me. I mean, wth. Thankfully the classic theme restorer helps out if you can jump through the right setting hoops, as this is a terrible design in my opinion. IE does this and I can't move it. I don't use IE. Chrome does this but lets me move it. I almost switch back to using chrome as my more permanent browser because of this. Whoever thought putting a tiny stop/reload button here should be removed from making u/i decisions. We wind up with command buttons on the left, command buttons on the right, and a command button in the middle for good measure. Pffttt.
now if they can just get rid of australis and make the browser actually useable again it would be perfect.
Firefox has grown to the point were it is more about money than the users. Google's dominance was the first big shot across the bow of its mission. Now this and the continued Chromification of the UI.
So it is decision time. Abandon the mission or the money. Unfortunately, I've seen this movie before and I know how it ends.
Mission is still the same, regardless if you're on the train or not.
Time for a fork...
People have already done this long ago. Not a lot of poeple using them though. Turns out most people may actually like these changes.
The Pale Moon browser is a better version of Firefox. Pale Moon appears to have better management than the Mozilla Foundation gives Firefox.
Pale Moon Windows version
Pale Moon Linux version
Here are some of the advantages:
1) Pale Moon has a 64-bit version. Firefox doesn't. The 64-bit Pale Moon uses the Firefox add-ons; there are no problems except with some unusual add-ons.
2) The "Find in page" is better in Pale Moon. In Firefox the "Find in page" field is on the left of the screen and the "Highlight All" and "Match Case" buttons are on the right. In Pale Moon they are together so that you immediately see if something is chosen from a former search.
3) Pale Moon has backup software. Firefox has only Mozbackup, which works well, but isn't Mozilla Foundation software.
4) Pale Moon is said to be more stable than Firefox. The memory-hogging flaws in Firefox are so widely acknowledged that there are add-ons for re-starting Firefox: Firefox Re-start Add-ons. I use Restartless Restart.
5) Pale Moon is completely independent of the forces that guide Firefox. Pale Moon is in no way associated with Mozilla Foundation. The Mozilla Foundation seems to feel forced to change Firefox in ways most users don't want.
Migration tool: Pale Moon has a profile migration tool.
Their original announcement reads like public relations bullshit: https://blog.mozilla.org/advan...
I am sure the gay employees at mozilla have spent private funds supporting their politics, and I didn't see that new ceo hassling them for it, even if he disagrees. Who's the better person here?
Anyway, none of this should matter because work is not a place where you get to hang out with the people you want to hang out with. You're going to encounter people who have beliefs and lifestyles that differ from yours. You're all there to work, not to establish little gay (or christian, or athletic etc) cliques and then demand the rest of society shield you from it. Whining and saying "I feel offended/unsafe" just to get someone fired for conflicting political beliefs is exactly the kind of systemic oppression people like yourself claim is such a problem. Nothing kills legitimacy faster than hypocrisy.
This is yet another reason that I'm a great fan of Firefox and Mozilla as a whole. Firefox (and Mozilla) remains the only major browser that has the user's privacy, functions, and security in mind; not to mention a great example of FOSS that is equally viable and usable to the neophyte as the guru. I'm glad that they backed off their latest endeavor in response to user worries, but we users need to figure out a palatable way to support Mozilla monetization soon!
Now personally, I didn't have a problem with the sponsored starting "quickslots" as I understood them. They only existed on a completely new install, were visibly marked as being sponsored, didn't send back any sort of user data or have other privacy issue, and vanished as soon as the user visited 9 web pages to take up all the "quick dial" slots with their own content! People being worried that it could bleed into something more is understandable, but we need to avoid lashing out at ANY monetization system, because we'll end up in a much worse state.
Like it or not, Mozilla needs funds to do what they do; acting the paragon of web virtue and privacy, having full time developers etc... isn't cheap. Especially in a market where the "bad guys' are offering "FREE SHINY SUPER CONVENIENCE FEATURE HEY LOOK AT THIS" at every turn, while simultaneously selling the user's data to the highest bidder (see: Google) , it is hard to offer a competing level of service and features with a better ethical bend; its even worse when the "bad guys" offer the biggest bucks (ie the reason that porn, faux antivirus sites, other dataminers and outright malware ads pay the most per click. On the other side, those like American health insurance companies, people search slime etc.. are willing to pay top dollar for your data if Google or whomever gathers it. Atop all of this, Google has to compete with "Joe User's" preferences. Though they do an excellent job bringing their support of an open web and privacy to light, Joe User still may like Chrome Widget A or Feature B, which is part of the reason that Firefox is trying to provide "Chrome UI styles" to those that want them in recent variants.
Ultimately, I want Mozilla to continue with its FOSS, openness, and privacy-focused mission and I am willing (and do) donate to the foundation in the hopes to help them do so. However, I know I am a minority - most people aren't going to donate and/or pay for a browser. If it is true that Firefox is going to lose a huge chunk of its revenue from including Google as one of its Search Bar default engines, they are going to have to make that up somehow. Honest and innocuous attempts to do so like the previous "quickdial sponsored starting pages" idea should likely be supported. Especially the tech and FOSS geek community shouldn't be rebuking any attempt for monetization, lest we end up with Mozilla either falling further and further behind as they don't have the money to keep up, or worse abandoning their principles to pay the bills. Instead, we need to be supporting Mozilla's attempts to make money that is still in line with their mission and our desires for openness, privacy, security and the like.
P.S. Despite being one of my favorite pieces of software, recently Thunderbird really needs some support too (especially, being able to detect the new Gmail Categories etc... that's something that the clout of Mozilla should be able to sit down with Google and work out a way to handle it) . Its sad that Mozilla hasn't the resources to invest in continuous improvements and have put the project on the back burner. We don't want to see this happen to Firefox too!
about:blank
So, just let me get this entirely straight. A man was hounded out of his job for not having the "correct" beliefs*, and when someone objects or defends his right to an opinion, he, too, is "intolerant" (and according to the downmodded post, a "closet homophobe)? This is your definition of tolerance?
Scratch a liberal or "advocacy group" and you see the same rotten core you saw in 1933.
And the terrible crime here is that the man contributed to a *successful* change to the CA constitution, after a previous *successful* propostion to the same effect was defeated by the same pack of "tolerance" bullies?
A fine twisting of words! Calling out bigotry and homophobia that uses legislation with the point of curtailing rights and freedoms is now "bullying" according to the wordsmiths like this moron. Your idiotic "change" to the CA constitution, was nothing more than telling a certain group of people to sit in the back of the fucking bus.
Good questions. I'm not certain of the answers. I have only just begun to use Pale Moon because I have complained about the Firefox memory-hogging for several years, and nothing has been done. I plan to run tests on Pale Moon using Session Manager add-on sessions that cause Firefox to crash.
.001 cent? It's easy money, from a company that makes money from having Firefox use Google as its default search engine.
The Pale Moon site owner says that there have been considerable changes. See the Pale Moon FAQ. Here is a quote:
"As Pale Moon has developed, so has the amount of individual code for the browser, steadily diverting Pale Moon from its sibling in the direction aimed for in this browser - having transformed it from an optimized build into a true "fork" of Firefox."
Firefox managers are apparently poor communicators and very poor managers. The subject of this Slashdot story is one example. Maybe the money Google gives Mozilla Foundation has corrupted the entire company.
Whoever writes the Pale Moon web site seems to be very knowledgeable and a good manager.
Mitchell Baker is the "Executive Chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation". She is a lawyer with no technical knowledge, apparently.
See The State of Mozilla: 2012 Annual Report -- Frequently Asked Questions. Quoting: (Seriously, this is copied from the site.) "Mozilla's consolidated reported revenue (Mozilla Foundation and all subsidiaries) for 2012 was $311M (US), up approximately 90 percent from $163M in 2011."
Have you seen $311,000,000 of development of Firefox? The amount of money is shocking to me. When someone clicks on an ad, Google may get 10 cents or 50 cents or $1.50. The cost to Google of linking to an ad is maybe
I would be very interested to know who gets the money, and how it is spent.
According to Wikipedia Mozilla Corp has 1000+ employees. That's an amazing amount of people for a web browser. Remember, Firefox is the only thing they do that's gained traction.
That's about 950 too much. What the hell are they all doing over there? It just smells like a huge corruption scandal waiting to explode.
More than anything, it's over-management that's made Mozilla an elephant. It can probably explain FirefoxOS as well.
They don't say they're ditching the plan.
They say 'we will experiment.' meaning:
'bit by bit we're going to achieve our goal, just so slowly that you won't all notice at the same time'.
Firefox 3.x was the apogee of runaway heap allocations. With my usage pattern and plug-ins I was losing 600 MB per day on average. I would have six FF Windows open on half a dozen different desktops, each with 20 to 50 active tabs. When I decided to restart FF because it could no longer keep up with my typing in a textarea box, my session saver would restore all of my FF windows to a pile on a single screen of a single desktop, and then there would be a tab reload storm something fierce. It was a ten minute interruption to get all my windows back to the desktop where they belonged, and FF itself sufficiently quiescent again to promptly enact GUI interactions.
My current FF leaks somewhere on the order of 100 MB/day and when I restart FF, it at least puts all my windows back on the same screen, if not the same desktop, and the tab reload storm is forestalled by lazy loading.
By that point I certainly wasn't sticking with FF because it was sleek or svelte. On the contrary, I was invested deeply enough in my suite of FF add-ons that I decided to tough it out (though rather loudly on the FF bug tracker).
I don't understand why so many outspoken voices on this thread purport to be sanguine about Firefox slipping back to the second or third tier in the absence of Google funding. Has no-one here ever read the red-hating Agatha Christie? Oligopoly, triopoly, duopoly, monopoly.
Each little Indian cut off at the knees substantially alters the political culture and calculus on Internet Island. Firefox is Piggy with the coke bottle glasses. Soon after Piggy's demise, civics aren't much discussed.
Think of Piggy as The First Samurai.
Just install the Classic Theme Restorer extension. A bit of configuring and you have a better Firefox than either version 28 and Australis.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Two firefox extentions I use now:
"Old default Image Style"
"Classic Theme Restorer"
All they do is restore previous behavior and give back features that have been taken away (like the statusbar). It's really sad that you now need extentions to get previous sane behavior back. And it's also a bit sad that the MemoryRestart extention is still a must since the memory leak problems that's been in Firefox since forever are still present and seem to get worse, not better, each release.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
My records show that I used FEBE in 2009. I had problems with it. Maybe it is better now. I will try it.
I am sure the gay employees at mozilla have spent private funds supporting their politics, and I didn't see that new ceo hassling them for it, even if he disagrees.
Can you really not see a difference between someone supporting equality and freedom for themselves and someone trying to limit another group's freedom?
You might as well argue that people who buy protective sportsware are the same as the ones who go around kicking people in the nuts.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
1) That tries to create an adversarial issue when there isn't one. Slashdot comments are not complete examinations of all usage cases. It's a fact that most people use Windows, by far. So, not all comments consider the less common cases.
2) "Minor oddities in the UI do not make a drastic difference in how the feature works..." That misses an important point. Someone at Mozilla Foundation made a mistake. That in itself is not a big issue. What is a big issue is that there are numerous managerial and coding mistakes: a) When Google began pouring a huge amount of money, Mozilla Foundation announced that it would not continue improving its Thunderbird email client. b) In the last 2 years, Firefox has seemed to become less stable. c) See the first comment in this Slashdot story. Quoting: That's not who we are at Mozilla (Score:4, Insightful) laugh... but you would have gone ahead with it if you could have gotten it past the "community". We need a new Firefox...
"3) Why should Mozilla focus on making a backup solution? That's not their business." What is their business? See The State of Mozilla: 2012 Annual Report -- Frequently Asked Questions. Quoting: "Mozilla's consolidated reported revenue (Mozilla Foundation and all subsidiaries) for 2012 was $311M (US), up approximately 90 percent from $163M in 2011." Have you seen $311,000,000 of development of Firefox in ONE year? Where does the money go? Who gets the money?
Again, the problem is not one issue. The problem is that there are a lot of issues.
"4) Yes, they would have to be crashier if Mozilla wants to replace the problematic parts of Firefox. You have to remember that Mozilla are the ones doing the real hard work in the trenches, we're just complaining about them not doing it perfectly."
That's an interesting point. Mozilla Foundation is doing hard work. However, couldn't there be better management for $311,000,000 in a year? Couldn't someone at Mozilla Foundation do better checks of the code?
"5) My point is that Pale Moon NEEDS Firefox to survive."
I agree. That's true at present. However, suppose Pale Moon eventually has 10% of the users? Will Google pay Pale Moon 10% of the money? Little by little, couldn't it happen that Pale Moon is the world's favorite browser and Mozilla Foundation slowly dies?
Why Firefox? A major reason Firefox is popular is not because it is Firefox, but because there are so many extensions. For example, consider the rapid adoption of Google's Chrome browser.
Donate to the dev of this extension! It's been said before that we shouldn't *need* an extension to restore UI sanity, but here we are, and this guy deserves support. (Yes, I donated)
And yet they went ahead with Australis... At least there are independent developers that provide options to go back from that horrendous mess.
And how much did Mozilla pay you for this little advertisement? Because I want in on that deal.
When I think privacy I certainly don't think Mozilla. These are the guys that support the advertising industry by parroting their bullshit excuses in refusing to let people opt in to do not track instead of defaulting them to opt out, or giving them a choice on install.
"Turns out most people may actually like these changes."
They do? So why in the past 6 or 7 years has Firefox gone from just over 50% market share to less than 20%? Are you aware of some poll that has a fuck load of people saying "I like the changes in Firefox, I just wont use it because I'm scared of Foxes" or something?
Otherwise I don't think "most" means what you think it means, at under 20% marketshare, coupled with a loss of 30% the overwhelming majority of people obviously don't like Firefox much and a large amount that used to use it have actively decided they wont use it any more.
Sending private funds to a specific political platform that isn't friendly to gay rights is NOT equal to using pro gay systemic bias to oust someone from a job. The litmus test is role reversal: If he got them ousted because they were gay, what would you think? Right. The left has manufactured a with us/against us culture around the protected castes in 'affirmative action' that is little different than the one neocons created around christianity. Both are reprehensible and detrimental to individual liberty.
Taking a moral stand and then resorting to end-justifies-means logic in the name of 'pragmatism', even when it contradicts the moral stand, is typical these days..